THE LEOPOLD AND LOEB TRIAL: A BRIEF ACCOUNT

BY DOUGLAS O. LINDER (c)1997

Darrow argues the Leopold-Loeb case before
Judge
Caverly

A
tragedy of
three young lost lives, a dead
fourteen-year-old victim and the imprisonment of two
teenage killers,
unfolded in Chicago in 1924. The murder trial of
Richard Loeb and
Nathan Leopold that shocked the nation is best remembered
decades
later for the twelve-hour long plea of Clarence Darrow to
save his
young
clients from the gallows. His summation, rambling
and
disorganized as it was at times, stands as one of the most
eloquent
attacks on the
death
penalty ever delivered in an American courtroom. Mixing
poetry and
prose,
science and emotion, a world-weary cynicism and a
dedication to his
cause,
hatred of bloodlust and love of man, Darrow takes his
audience on an
oratorical
ride that would be unimaginable in a criminal trial today.
Even without
Darrow in his prime, the Leopold
and
Loeb trial has the elements to justify its billing as the
first "trial
of the century." It is not surprising that the public
responded to a
trial
that involved the kidnapping and murder of a young boy
from
one of Chicago's most prominent families, a bizarre
relationship
between
two promising scholars-turned-murderers, what the
prosecutor called an
"act of Providence" leading to the apprehension of the
teenage
defendants,
dueling psychiatrists, and an experienced and
sharp-tongued state's
attorney
bent on hanging the confessed killers in spite of their
relative youth.

The crime that captured national
attention
in
1924
began as a fantasy in the mind of eighteen-year old
Richard Loeb, the
handsome
and privileged son of a retired Sears Roebuck vice
president.
(Interestingly, Barack Obama's home in Chicago's Kenwood
neighborhood
(5046 S. Greenwood) is only one block from Loeb's former
home.) Loeb
was
obsessed with crime. Despite his intelligence and
standing as the
youngest graduate ever of the University of Michigan,
Loeb read mostly
detective stories. He read about crime, he planned
crimes, and he
committed
crimes, although none until 1924 were crimes involving
physical harm to
a person. ( Darrow and Leopold later saw Loeb's
fascination with crime
as form of rebellion against the well-meaning, but
strict and
controlling,
governess who raised him.) For Loeb, crime became a sort
of game; he
wanted
to commit the perfect crime just to prove that it could
be done.

Loeb's nineteen-year old
partner in
crime,
Nathan Leopold, was interested in ornithology,
philosophy, and
especially,
Richard Loeb. Like Loeb, Leopold was a child of wealth
and opportunity,
the son of a millionaire box manufacturer. At the time
of their crime,
Leopold was a law student at the University of Chicago
and
was planning to begin studies at Harvard Law School
after a family trip
to Europe in the summer. Leopold already had achieved
recognition as
the
nation's leading authority on the
Kirtland
warbler, an endangered
songbird,
and frequently lectured on the subjects of his
ornithological passion.
As a student of philosophy, Leopold was attracted to
Friedrich
Nietzsche.
Nietzsche's influence on early twentieth century
academics was
powerful,
and the merits of ideas contained in books like his BeyondGood
and Evil were fiercely debated in centers of
learning like the
University
of Chicago. Leopold agreed with Nietzsche's criticism of
moral codes,
and
believed that legal obligations did not apply to those
who approached
"the
superman." Leopold's idea of the superman was his friend
and lover,
Richard
Loeb.

Loeb and Leopold had an
intense
and
stormy
relationship. At one time Leopold contemplated killing
Loeb over a
perceived
breach of confidentiality. This relationship, described
by Darrow as
"weird
and almost impossible," led the two boys to do together
what they
almost
certainly would never have done apart: commit murder.
Motives are often
unclear, and they are in this trial. Neither the
defense's theory that
the murder was an effort by both to deepen their
relationship nor the
prosecution's
theory that money to pay off gambling debts and a desire
by Loeb to
"have
something" on Leopold in order to counter Leopold's
unwanted demands
for
sex, are likely accurate. What is clearest about the
motives is that
Leopold's
attraction to Loeb was his primary reason for
participating in the
crime.
Leopold later wrote that "Loeb's friendship was
necessary to me--
terribly
necessary" and that his motive, "to the extent that I
had one, was to
please
Dick." For Loeb, the crime was more an escape from the
ordinary; an
interesting
intellectual exercise.

Murder was a necessary element
in
their
plan
to commit the perfect crime. The two teenagers spent
months discussing
and
refining a plan that included kidnapping the child of a
wealthy
parents,
demanding a ransom, and collecting the ransom after it
was thrown off a
moving train as it passed a designated point. Neither
Loeb nor Leopold
relished the idea of murdering their kidnap victim, but
they thought it
critical to minimizing their likelihood of being
identified as the
kidnappers.
Their victim turned out to be an acquaintance of the two
boys, Bobby
Franks.

Franks was simply in the wrong
place
at
the
wrong time. On May 21, 1924 at about five o'clock in the
afternoon,
Bobby
Franks was walking home from school when a green
Willys-Knight
automobile
pulled
up near him. Loeb asked Franks to come over to the car,
asked him to
get
in the car to discuss a tennis racquet, then killed him
with a chisel
as
the two drove off. Most evidence suggests that
Loeb, sitting in the rear seat behind Franks, killed the
boy with several blows to the head (see the testimony of
defense psychiatrist Bernard Gluek, who says Loeb
admitted to being the
killer),
but there is some dispute about this. Leopold and Loeb
drove their rented car to a marshland near the Indiana
line, where they stripped Franks naked, poured
hydrochloric acid over
his
body to make identification more difficult, then stuffed
the body in a
concrete drainage culvert. The boys returned to the Loeb
home where
they
burned Franks' clothing in a basement fire. That evening
Mrs. Franks
received
a phone call from Leopold, who identified himself as
"George Johnson."
Leopold told Franks that her boy had been kidnapped, but
was unharmed,
and that she should expect a ransom note soon. The next
morning the
Franks
family received a special delivery letter asking that
they immediately
secure $10,000 in old, unmarked bills and telling them
to expect
further
instructions that afternoon. Leopold ("George Johnson")
called Jacob
Franks,
Bobby's father, shortly before three o'clock to tell him
a taxi cab was
about to
arrive
at his home and that he should take it to a specified
drugstore in
South
Chicago. Franks, however would not get into the Yellow
Cab that pulled
up in front of his home. He had just received
another call,
this one from the police, spoiling hope that the perfect
crime would be
executed. The body of Bobby Franks had been identified;
a laborer
happened
to see a flash of what turned out to be a foot through
the the
shrubbery
covering the open culvert where the body had been
placed.

Ransom note sent to Franks

There would have been no
arrests and
no
trial
but for what the prosecutor called "the hand of God at
work in this
case."
A pair of horn-rimmed tortoise shell glasses were
discovered with the
body of Bobby
Franks.
The glasses, belonging to Nathan Leopold, had slipped
out of the jacket
he removed as he struggled to hide the body. They had an
unusual hinge
and could
be
traced to a single Chicago optometrist, who had written
only three such
prescriptions, including the one to Leopold. When
questioned about the
glasses, Leopold said that he must have lost them on one
of his
frequent
birding expeditions. He was asked by an investigator to
demonstrate how
the glasses might have fallen out of his pockets, but
failed after a
series
of purposeful trips to dislodge the glasses from his
coat. Questioning
became more intense.

Leopold said that
he
spent the twenty-first of May
picking up girls in his car with Loeb and driving out to
Lincoln Park.
Loeb, when questioned separately, confirmed Leopold's
alibi. State's
attorney Robert Crowe, heading the investigation, was
skeptical.
Among the items found in a search of the Leopold home
was a letter
written by Nathan strongly suggesting that he and Loeb
had a homosexual
relationship. Still, prosecutor's
were on the verge of releasing the two suspects when two
additional
pieces
of evidence surfaced. First, typewritten notes taken
from a member of
Leopold's
law school study group were found to match the the type
from the ransom
note, despite the fact that an earlier search of the
Leopold home
turned
up a typewriter with unmatching type. Then came a
statement from the
Leopold
family chauffeur, made in the hope of establishing
Nathan's innocence,
that spelled his doom. He said he was certain that the
Leopold car, the
one the boys claimed they had spent the night driving
around with
girls, had
not left the garage on the day of the murder.

Loeb confessed first, then
Leopold.
Their
confessions
differed only on the point of who did the actual
killing, with each
pointing
the finger at the other. Leopold later pleaded with Loeb
to admit to
killing
Franks but, according to Leopold, Loeb said, "Mompsie
feels less
terrible
than she might, thinking you did it and I'm not going to
take that
shred
of comfort away from her."

The Loeb and Leopold families
hired
Clarence
Darrow and Benjamin Bachrach to represent the two boys.
Nathan said his
first impression of Darrow was one of "horror",
unimpressed as he was
by
Darrow's unruly hair, rumpled jacket, egg-splattered
shirt, suspenders,
and askew tie. His opinion of Darrow would soon change.
He later
described
his attorney as a great, simple, unaffected man, with a
"deep-seated,
all-embracing
kindliness." In his book Life Plus
Ninety-Nine Years, Leopold wrote
that
if asked to name the two men who "came closest to
preaching the pure
essence
of love" he would say Jesus and Clarence Darrow.

It was Darrow's decision to
change
the
boys'
initial pleas to the charges of murder and kidnapping
from "not guilty"
(suggesting a traditional insanity defense) to "guilty."
The decision
was
made primarily to prevent the state from getting two
opportunities to
get
a death sentence. With "not guilty" pleas, the state had
planned to try
the boys first on one of the two charges, both of which
carried the
death
penalty in Illinois, and if it failed to win a hanging
on the first
charge,
try again on the second. The guilty plea also meant that
the sentencing
decision would be made by a judge, not by a jury.
Darrow's decision to
plead the boys guilty undoubtedly was based in part on
his belief that
the judge who would hear their case, John R. Caverly,
was a "kindly and
discerning" man. With the public seemingly unanimous in
calling for
death,
Darrow did not want to face a jury. In his summation
Darrow noted,
"where
responsibility is divided by twelve, it is easy to say
‘away with him';
but, your honor, if these boys are to hang, you must do
it--...it must
be by your cool, premeditated act, without a chance to
shift
responsibility."

The defense hoped to build its
case
against
death around the testimony of four psychiatrists, called
"alienists" at
the time. The best talent psychiatric talent 1924 had to
offer was
sought
out by both sides to examine the defendants. Even
Sigmund Freud was
asked
to come to Chicago for the trial, but his poor health at
the time
prevented
the visit. The prosecution argued that psychiatric
testimony was only
admissible
if the defendants claimed insanity, while the defense
argued
strenuously
that evidence of mental disease should be considered as
a mitigating
factor
in consideration of the sentence. In the most critical
ruling of the
trial,
Judge Caverly decided against the state's objection, and
allowed the
psychiatric
evidence to be introduced.

Judge Caverly listens to testimony
of a boy
who
talked
to Loeb

The trial (technically a
hearing,
rather
than
a trial, because of the entry of guilty pleas) of
Leopold and Loeb
lasted
just over one month. The state presented over a hundred
witnesses
proving--
needlessly, in the opinion of many-- every element of
the crime. The
defense
presented extensive psychiatric evidence describing the
defendants'
emotional
immaturity, obsessions with crime and Nietzschean
philosophy, alcohol
abuse,
glandular abnormalities, and sexual longings and
insecurities. Lay
witnesses,
classmates and associates of Loeb, were offered to prove
his
belligerence,
inappropriate laughter, lack of judgment, and
childishness. Other lay
witness
testified as to Leopold's egocentricity and
argumentative nature. The
state
offered in rebuttal psychiatrists who saw normal
emotional responses in
the boys and no physical basis for a finding of mental
abnormality.

On August 22, 1924, Clarence
Darrow
began
his
summation for the defense in a "courtroom jammed to
suffocation, with
hundreds
of men and women rioting in the corridors outside." As a
newspaper
reporter
observed, the setting underscored Darrow's argument
"that the court was
the only thing standing between the boys and a
bloodthirsty mob." For
over
twelve hours Darrow reminded Judge Caverly of the
defendants' youth,
genetic
inheritance, surging sexual impulses, and the many
external influences
that had led them to the commission of their crime.
Never before or
since
the Leopold and Loeb trial has the deterministic
universe, this life of
"a series of infinite chances", been so clearly made the
basis of a
criminal
defense. In pleading for Loeb's life Darrow argued, "
Nature is strong
and she is pitiless. She works in mysterious ways, and
we are her
victims.
We have not much to do with it ourselves. Nature
takes this job
in
hand, and we only play our parts. In the words of old
Omar Khayyam, we
are only Impotent pieces in the game He plays Upon this
checkerboard of
nights and days, Hither and thither moves, and checks,
and slays, And
one
by one back in the closet lays. What had this boy had to
do with it? He
was not his own father; he was not his own mother....All
of this was
handed
to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and
wealth. He did
not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to
pay."
In pleading that Leopold be spared , Darrow said, "Tell
me that you can
visit the wrath of fate and chance and life and eternity
upon a
nineteen-
year-old boy!"

Darrow attacked the death
penalty as
atavistic,
saying it "roots back to the beast and the jungle." Time
and time again
Darrow challenged the notion of "an eye for an eye": "If
the state in
which
I live is not kinder, more humane, and more considerate
than the mad
act
of these two boys, I am sorry I have lived so long."
Darrow told Judge
Caverly that a life sentence was punishment severe
enough for the
crime.
He reminded the judge how little Leopold and Loeb would
have to look
forward
to in the long days, months, and years ahead: "In all
the endless road
you tread there's nothing but the night." When Darrow
finally ended his
appeal, according to one newspaper account, tears were
streaming down
the face of Judge Caverly and many
other
courtroom spectators. The reporter wrote, "There was
scarcely any
telling
where his voice had finished and where silence had
begun. It lasted for
a minute, two minutes."

State's Attorney Robert Crowe
closed
for
the
prosecution. He sarcastically attacked the arguments of
"the
distinguished
gentlemen whose profession it is to protect murder in
Cook County, and
concerning whose health thieves inquire before they go
out and commit a
crime." Addressing Leopold, Crowe said, "I wonder now,
Nathan, whether
you think there is a God or not. I wonder whether you
think it is pure
accident that this disciple of Nietzsche's philosophy
dropped his
glasses
or whether it was an act of Divine Providence to visit
upon your
miserable
carcasses the wrath of God." (Leopold, much later, said
he wondered the
same thing.) He heaped ridicule on Darrow's attempt to
blame the crime
on anyone and anything but the defendants: "My God, if
one of them had
a harelip I suppose Darrow would want me to apologize
for having them
indicted."
Crowe called the defense psychiatrists "The Three Wise
Men from the
East"
and accused one of them of being "in his second
childhood" and
"prostituting
his profession." He reserved his strongest language for
the two
defendants,
who he referred to as "cowardly perverts", "snakes",
"atheists",
"spoiled
smart alecs", and "mad dogs." For Crowe, this was a
premeditated crime
committed by two remorseless defendants, and the
appropriate punishment
was obvious. The "real defense" in the case, according
to Crowe, was
"Clarence
Darrow and his peculiar philosophy of life." It ought
not be a defense,
suggested Crowe, who closed by asking Judge Caverly to
"execute justice
and righteousness in the land."

Two weeks later Caverly
announced his
decision.
He called the murder "a crime of singular atrocity."
Caverly said that
his "judgment cannot be affected" by the causes of crime
and that it
was
"beyond the province of this court" to "predicate
ultimate
responsibility
for human acts." Nonetheless, Caverly said that "the
consideration of
the
age of the defendants" and the possible benefits to
criminology that
might
come from future study of them persuaded him that life
in prison, not
death,
was the better punishment. He said that he was doing
them no favor: "To
the offenders, particularly of the type they are, the
prolonged years
of
confinement may well be the severest form of retribution
and
expiation."

Richard Loeb and Nathan
Leopold were
moved
to the Joliet penitentiary. In 1936, Loeb was slashed
and killed with a
razor in a showroom fight with James Day, another
inmate. Leopold
rushed
to the prison hospital to be at his old friend's bedside
as he died.
Day
claimed that he was resisting Loeb's sexual advances,
while prison
officials
called it a deliberate and unprovoked attack. Day was
acquitted by a
jury.
Leopold managed to keep intellectually active in prison.
He taught in
the
prison school, mastered foreign languages, worked as an
x-ray
technician in the prison hospital, reorganized the
prison library,
volunteered
to be tested with an experimental malaria vaccine, and
designed a new
system
of prison education. In 1958, after thirty-four years of
confinement,
Leopold
was
released from prison. To escape the publicity
accompanying the release
of Compulsion, a movie based on the 1924 crime
(and which
Leopold
and his lawyer, Elmer Gertz, challenged in a lawsuit as
an invasion of
privacy), Leopold migrated to Puerto Rico. He earned a
master's degree,
taught mathematics, and worked in hospitals and church
missions. He
wrote
a book entitled The Birds of Puerto Rico.
Despite saying in a
1960
interview that he was still deeply in love with Richard
Loeb, he
married.
Leopold said he often found himself wondering during his
years in
Puerto
Rico at what point the thirty-four dark years in prison
became balanced
by the subsequent sunshine of freedom. Leopold died
following ten days
of hospitalization on August 30, 1971. The next
morning his
corneas
were removed. One was given to a man, the other to
a woman.